AMR research report...
Some comments from AMR research that may be of interest to you on IMI.
>New Release Readies IMI for Strategic Relaunch
>
>Hard on the heels of the news two weeks ago of a strategic
>initiative with i2 Technologies, IMI is back in the Alert
>this week with news of a new version of its product, System
>ESS 5.2. We met with IMI's chief product strategists and
>marketing team for a quick look under the hood of the new
>release. It's clear that IMI has substantially broadened
>and deepened the footprint of its one and only product.
>Impressed as we were by the extensions and enhancements in
>the product, we were stunned to learn that IMI has earmarked
>this as a point release, especially since it's been eighteen
>months since the last release, 5.1. We know of many other
>vendors who would have taken much less and launched it as a
>major release or even a new suite of products!
>
>System ESS 5.2 expands the application footprint beyond
>order management functionality. This release integrates
>Open Warehouse, a warehouse management application IMI
>acquired from Ceratina, a Swedish WMS vendor, in early 1997.
>Service Manager adds integrated after-sales service
>management functionality, while Demand Chain Planner
>provides tactical inventory management functionality in
>forecasting, planning, and sourcing. Finally, Customer and
>Economic Value provides capabilities for economic value
>analysis of the business by customer, order, product, or any
>aggregation. These capabilities invoke the robust DuPont
>EVA Model, a technique commonly taught in business schools
>but rarely applied in business for lack of data.
>Recognizing the need for such data, the original designers
>of System ESS architected the product around the granular
>data elements needed for DuPont analysis. The Customer and
>Economic Value component also provides datamart-like
>capabilities in a set of statistical objects for performance
>analysis.
>
>The release also includes more than twenty enhancements in
>the order management functionality, the core of System ESS.
>These include flexible invoice triggering, improved customer
>profiling, improved price management, integrated logical and
>physical warehouse concepts, line-item independence in
>purchase order management, enhancements in globalization and
>localization functions (streamlined euro-handling and
>embedded world tax compliance engine via Taxware), and
>improved printing via Jetforms.
>
>Perhaps the biggest news involves expanded electronic
>commerce capabilities. System ESS 5.2 rolls out more Web-
>enabled core functionality, including Java-based order entry
>capabilities, on an Internet Commerce Workbench. That
>functionality is supporting the Web commerce activities of
>Forlagsentralen, the largest Swedish book retailer. With
>its scalability and process logic to handle complex
>logistics and data granularity, it makes a compelling case
>for putting System ESS at the core of any enterprise-class
>electronic commerce business. We expect core System ESS
>capability should drive significant e-business opportunities
>through IMI's relationship with IBM to integrate System ESS
>with Net.Commerce, its merchant server software. When used
>together, the systems will deliver an e-business solution
>with complete order management capabilities, including
>advanced order entry and tracking, customer profiles, price
>and promotion management, and distribution management, to
>tailor fulfillment processes to the needs of individual
>customers.
>
>What's the bottom line? Plenty of potential. In addition
>to the new product, IMI has reinvigorated its sales and
>marketing organizations in North America and Europe. By the
>numbers, the organization looks as strong now as ever. In
>North America (which lost a number of key employees within
>the past year) the sales organization includes 12 account
>managers, versus 8 last year; 8 presales, versus 4 last
>year; and 3 regional managers, against none a year ago. An
>under-performing sales and alliance organization in Europe
>has been reorganized and restaffed. While IMI cannot yet
>point to new revenue from its relationship with Oracle in
>CPG, the two companies have taken several steps to eliminate
>channel conflicts, have improved their implementation
>capabilities, and are undertaking joint development to
>improve integration.
>
>All things considered, with a new product and other
>improvements in hand, now seems like a great time to re-
>launch the company, rename the product, bring complex
>logistics solutions to e-commerce and do it all with a lot
>of fanfare. To be sure, even with significant complementary
>functionality, System ESS remains an order management
>application, spanning order capture and validation,
>sourcing, delivery, and after-sales support. That's the
>vital core of its two toughest competitors, SAP's R/3 and
>legacy custom order management applications. IMI's success,
>as a single point solution provider, swings on taking its
>complex logistics-handling message straight at e-commerce
>supply chain management.
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